by Suzanne Hart
Pippa frowned at the takeout, but was glad she wouldn’t have to cook anything, reasoning as I had, that one more meal probably wouldn’t hurt Felix too much.
After Felix had gone to bed, she could tell something was on my mind. But as always, kept a safe distance. She was my father’s half-sister, and apart from our arrangement with Felix, never got involved in family affairs.
As we sat there, her not asking me a million questions that I was silently asking myself, my cell buzzed and wouldn’t stop. It was my father, so I had to take it.
“You’re to return home at once, Natalia. I want you on the next flight; I’m texting the boarding pass to you. Be on that plane, a car will be waiting.”
I didn’t have a second to even draw breath, his tone was rough and his message was clear. I was being called to heel. I had to return for the sake of the family. Whenever there was a crisis, or one looming, all Bernardis were rallied together, to stand firm against whatever the challenge was.
My heart was in my throat. Pippa had heard my father over the phone’s speaker. She had tears in her eyes, knowing full well the impact of such a command at the worst possible time. I would have to return to Miami.
Oh, Felix. I’m sorry baby. I’ll be back as soon as I can.
I debated in my mind the consequences of not returning. I banked on the fact that my father already knew about Mikey, and that in itself was inexcusable, and unimaginable for him. But what had happened? I didn’t know and the only way to really find out was to go back.
I felt like the worst mother in the world. Pippa was understanding, I knew Felix wouldn’t be so. I thought again about Mikey, how I wished he was sober and actually felt the same about me as I felt about him.
But I thought we weren’t getting the Mikey doll… you did say so. All men are the same, remember?
It was the same old tape that had played in my head all day since I’d decided I didn’t have feelings for him. Then I did again, then I didn’t. And so on and so on.
Pippa squeezed my hand, reading my thoughts. “Go to him.” I knew she wasn’t talking about my father either.
“But Felix…” I started, tears spilling from my lids as I felt myself failing again.
She hugged me so tightly; warmer than any hug my family had ever given me. She seemed to know what I was feeling and I felt just a little piece of that burden lift as she held me for as long as she could.
“Now go,” she said softly. “We’ll still be here when you get back. I’ll look after Felix, don’t worry about that.”
I ended up calling a cab to the airport. My eyes were too blurry and my heart was too low. The flight home matched the blur in my eyes, and the ride to the family home was the same. As I dried the sore redness from my face, I was sitting in front of my father. He sighed loudly, clasping his hands behind his back, pacing.
After mulling it over in his mind, he stopped in front of me, opened his mouth to speak then kept pacing. I looked around the huge room, the opulence and wealth it reeked of. Was it all worth it? I wondered. Was the happiness of my son and myself worth any of this?
Finally he spoke. “Natalia. I won’t even speak of what your part in this was, but all I will say is that he is an enemy of this family and he is a double-crossing son of a fucking bitch; like every other fucking Leone pig!”
He resumed his pacing, feverishly crossing the carpet over and over, shaking his head. I lowered mine and just waited.
“If it wasn’t for your mother… She… and now your brother in the hospital!? It’s all your doing, Natalia. I hope you are happy!” He had stopped in front of me, and his lower lip trembled. I wanted to hug him. Out of a sense of duty, but when I searched my heart, I really felt nothing for that man. He was a cold-blooded, calculating killer. I wondered how many other families had gone through much worse at the hands of Bernardi henchmen.
I had expected a lot worse from him though. I wanted so badly to ask him about Claridge, about the cocaine deal, but then was definitely not the time or the place for that.
He composed himself by degrees, but maintained an air of arrogance and disappointment. “You are to remain in this house until I say so. Nobody else knows about him, so I suggest you keep it that way. Just so you know a little more about your boyfriend though, he pulled out of his end of our agreement. He’s a coward and a liar, just like the rest of them. If you value your life, you will forget that boy, Natalia.” That was all he had to say. He stomped out of the room, slamming the doors behind him.
A short while later, two men crept in and stood either side of the doorway. A clear message that I wasn’t going anywhere outside of the house and I would have two pairs of eyes on me wherever I went while I was kept there. I thought of Felix and of Mikey again. I turned away from the guards, sobbing quietly to myself for a while, and then I resigned myself to going to my room, to sleep if I could manage it.
If I was being held prisoner by my own family, I feared far worse for Mikey. The Leone’s were ruthless and Leone was renowned for ruling with an iron hand. I suddenly felt nothing for myself; only for Felix and for Mikey. Against all my judgment and confusion, the thought of him being put to death for what he had done was too much to even consider. I did love him. He must feel the same way, but if he didn’t, I would love him anyway and live the rest of my life however that turned out, with the memory of the magical time we had together. I prayed and prayed, until it hurt inside, that he and Felix would be safe, that the storm would pass, and that one day we could be our own family.
Sixteen
Mikey
Life in the house went on, at high alert and without me involved. Men were arriving in vans and trucks, and there were more guns than I cared to count. A sense of urgent expectation filled the air, but not fear. Never fear in the Leone house. Preparedness and willingness to fight to the last man, the last bullet, yes. But never fear.
I was free to leave my room, roam as far as the main stairwell, but there were always two or more friendly gorillas who suggested I might like it better in my room, or maybe the room next to it. Meals were delivered, with delicious and exciting foods, but I wasn’t interested. All signs of alcohol or other enjoyment were noticeably absent.
After the first morning was over, since I had seen my father, I was planning my escape, trying to find a gap in the guard’s routine, or to see if they even had one. And just so that I could at least try and make good on my own escape from that place, once and for all.
The drugs would most likely be gone. Just like my phone, everything had been taken from me. I hadn’t been able to contact Bernardi and could only imagine the worst there. So there I was, right back where I had started. A golden opportunity had been missed, but I didn’t feel totally beaten for some strange reason. I felt I had a trump card, and her name kept bubbling up to the surface of my mind and my feelings throughout every hour of the day.
Natalia.
It was just habit, I guess. Being penned into a corner, my mind started to stretch and flex in every possible and even impossible direction in search of a way I could, not only escape, but get some money and some more good times and start over. It seemed to be the way I was made. It didn’t seem to matter how many times it never worked, nearly killed me or was just plain dumb. I kept on searching for new and exciting ways to tell myself I was happy, when really I was just kidding myself.
Natalia reentered my mind as one of those avenues of thought. She had money. Lots of money. I knew she had feelings for me, but I was still on the fence whenever I put the party life I loved so much side by side with the feelings I knew I had developed for her. How could it possibly work out? She was a Bernardi and the instant money plan I had devised seemed to have evaporated as quickly as it had come to me. It really never crossed my mind that old Uncle Lucias might just wonder where his shipping container of coke and guns might’ve been. I guessed the penny dropped when he ran out of cigars.
From what I overheard from the men, and what I learned from the voices drifti
ng up from the floors below me; there was preparation for an all-out war with the Bernardi’s, but the men didn’t know the exact details as to why. It was known that one of the Bernardi sons had been ordered to be beaten, not killed. But the reasons why were a mystery to the men, reflected in their own vocal suspicions, the small talk they had amongst themselves, and generally the look in their eyes. Every one of them. Except Slade.
I’d imagined it was Slade himself who was ordered to do the beating on Bernardi’s boy. Only he was trusted by my father to keep silent, plus he was the only one really who had the skill and tactical knowledge to get close enough to anyone he liked. He was a scary guy and I often felt a gap between us where there should have naturally been some sort of common bond. It was hard to explain. I didn’t expect him to be my friend; I just felt he might hate me a little less if we weren’t in the situation we were in.
Since all the trouble in the household, his looking at me was past the warning stage. He looked ready to finish me off at the drop of a hat. It bothered me, not because I feared for my safety anymore, but because he would have been the best man in the house to have on my side, even slightly on my side, if I was to escape.
Where I would go? Even if I could get out of the house, I didn’t know. If I could only contact Natalia, I might at least have a hope. If I could call Mia even. But then again, if the coke had been found, it was in her company’s warehouse system, so she would probably be a little more than upset with me for using her like that. It brought back an avalanche of memories of the last time I had screwed up just as bad. The time I had lifted my dear mother’s jewelry from Mia’s penthouse. Borrowing it to hock for some cash until I could… Well, I really had no idea what I was doing at the time.
Mia used to have time for me. Even during her ascension to the position of a global fashion powerhouse, she used to always make time and some money available for her baby brother, Mikey. It was an indulgence my father tolerated because Mia was always sensible and never just gave me cash, or let me take a credit card to a club, or anywhere for that matter. Everything was neatly controlled through the veil of sibling care and responsibility. If I needed something, it was sent to me. Anything I wanted or needed, except the things I really wanted and ended up needing. Through addiction, not choice or plain old fancy.
It was also the time that it became clear to my family that I had a major problem controlling my compulsions with drugs, alcohol and everything that goes along with those two devils.
Papa had pushed me out of the house. He was tired of my loafing around, the drinking and asking the guards if they could get me anything stronger. He liked that he could keep me under some sort of control, under his own roof. He didn’t like the person I had become, or how I behaved when I wasn’t getting what I wanted. Mia offered to have me stay at her place for a while, even getting me to do some work with her business; trying out a few different things to see if I liked anything.
I liked the idea of being out of the house very much, the whole business side of her operation; the actual doing of stuff, but it wasn’t where my head was at back then. I was not too much younger, but certainly being driven by my hormones and my tastes for the party life.
I had wanted to make a bee-line for the models, the backstage areas at the fashion shows. Mia was far too intelligent for that. She set me up in accounts first, then graphic design, then warehousing. Finally, I was relegated to being a mail boy.
“Just until HR let me know there’s something else, sweetie.” My sister had told me, believing her own story because she’d had to.
If she’d told herself her own brother, son of a multi-millionaire crime boss and sibling to herself, a multi-billionaire; it would have been too embarrassing to contemplate. I was a screw-up and I knew it. Like being stuck in the Leone household, I was stuck in my sister’s world. And it was way worse.
I knew Mia had money to burn, but like a lot of people in her situation, it was all in the hands of other people. Things just appeared when she ordered them or asked for them, there weren’t piles of cash lying around I could just help myself to. Same as at my father’s place. I was getting desperate one afternoon. I had managed to score some stuff on credit from one of the guys in the mailroom, he knew I was good for it, being a Leone and all. I hadn’t realized back then, but I could’ve just threatened him with some terrible consequence if he didn’t give me what I’d wanted. It never even crossed my mind to act like my father or his goons to get what I wanted. The worst thing I did had started back then. I stole to get money to get drugs. Stealing wouldn’t have been an issue for my father, but I stole from my family. That was a big problem for him, and ultimately, for me to deal with too.
I remember how Mia was getting ready to go to one of her things, a big deal with lots of glitz and glamour. I wasn’t invited. She had out some flashy necklaces and earrings. Real expensive stuff, made with real diamonds and gems, gold; the whole bit. I was starting to withdraw from lack of drugs in my body, my skin was crawling and I ached so bad inside. In my mind, at the time, I reasoned I would just borrow some jewelry, long enough to get some money to buy some gear, then sell some and get the money back, getting the jewelry back as well. It all made perfect sense to my fried brain at the time.
I’d swapped what Mia had set out with something else; something I thought was similar enough. I swiped the jewels like they were mine to take and I left her penthouse, figuring I’d be back once she’d gone out and that she would never know. I was wrong on all counts, let me just say that.
I hadn’t got far, trying to pawn or even sell the jewels by that stage, and I was so desperate for something in my system. People were warning me to just go home and start over. Mia had been swift in telling my father and he had put the word on the street that if anybody had dealings with me or those jewels before he got them back, they would pay for it with their life. Simple. And it worked. I had a hell of a time before I found someone dumb enough to take them off my hands.
Thinking back, it was myself who had lost all sense and was totally at the mercy of my habit. I’d never felt so low as when I learned that the jewels were my mother’s. A gift to her from my father and the only thing of my mother’s he had entrusted anyone to look after. In this case, Mia, because she would respect them and appreciate them better than anyone.
I had gotten what I wanted from the deal, well, I got some cash. Enough to disappear and party for a little while, but when the money ran out, so did the girls, then the drugs and then the booze. It always seemed to play out in that order. Once again I was left with nothing and my last resort, Mia, had already been used up. At the time, I thought it was for the last time, but she did eventually forgive me; after financing a series of clinical rehabs for me, mostly because she was able to realize how out of my mind I really was back then. If I’d have known those jewels were Mama’s, I wouldn’t have done what I did. I really believe I wouldn’t have.
Papa, true to his word, got the jewels back. It took two years and a trail of bodies, but he got them. I shuddered every time I thought about it for so long after that, swearing off the drugs, the booze; the women. But I had always gone back, sooner or later. I’d tell myself enough bullshit that I would actually believe in it, just one time. Enough to go and screw it all up again.
Until Natalia had come along. At least, that’s what I had thought. And yet there I was again, back to square one with no way out. Stuck in a maze with no exit.
Seventeen
Natalia
Being an ‘at home girl’ never bothered me before, not for one minute. I had everything I needed or wanted, and more. The minute it’s under duress though, the very second someone tells me I can’t leave or has me followed from room to room, I don’t like it one little bit. It’s like a permanent Thanksgiving or Christmas holiday, where everybody is in each other’s faces for an extended period, which always leads to explosive confrontations. Not that anyone in the family really needed much provoking.
My father wouldn’t be
seen by anyone who wasn’t on his highest and most important business. There was talk of a war with the Leone’s, something I’d heard once or twice in my life, but never really understood what it meant. The guards and other house staff were just downright rude to me most of the time. I made do with what I could manage myself. It was totally out of character for me and I had no intentions of sharing any of my real problems, but I decided to seek out my mother.
Some of the staff looked at me as if I was asking for the second coming when I asked where I might find my mother. I happened to find her personal assistant, who let me know she was in one of the gardens; I shot an inquiring glance to the two men who had been following me from building to building. They shrugged, showing no objection to me going outside to look for my mother. They stayed close enough for me to feel them though.
It was nice out. I watched my mother for a while before she noticed me. She was pruning roses. I’d never noticed this part of one of the gardens, and it appeared to be her own creation. Rows of what I assumed were different varieties of roses. The lawns had been manicured, clipped to within an inch of the ornate borders of mini hedgerows. I figured she was just pruning for pruning’s sake. I couldn’t imagine her doing all that work in the garden, not all by herself. Without looking up, she addressed me, as if reading my mind.
“I sure did. Every tiny detail, did it all with my own two hands. How are you, Natalia?” She looked tired, pale. She had on a large straw hat, tied under her dimple of a chin with a huge, wide, pink ribbon. It matched her apron.
